Post navigation

Open Letter to the President: Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline

The odds that President Obama will read the following blog letter addressed to him are extremely slim – probably the same odds that I will be elected President of the United States during any future election.

But I’m going to post it anyway. Who Cares? – Right? It’s the joy of blogging.

Mr President,

One of the key questions on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline goes to who do you trust and who should the American people trust?

A) – We can trust the science – in both the impacts of pollution on our air – and on our water from the frequent spills we will certainly see. And we can trust the science on climate change.

Or B) – We could trust Big Oil and its lobbyists and CEOs and non-scientists.

The B option has the poorest of track records. Remember before the Gulf Oil Gusher, when the propaganda from politicians and Big Oil was telling us off-shore oil drilling was soooo safe and spills rarely, ever happen? After the one of the biggest man-made disasters in world history unfolded in the Gulf of Mexico and after we found out the level of coverup that transpired, we found out that leaks and spills were commonplace in the Gulf and the equipment is anything but safe.

The lives of so many people were impacted and of course the suffering for wildlife was extreme. We should never forget the images of animals covered with thick layers of sludge or the individuals who died on the rig. Had the Federal Government and the Minerals Management Service not so fully trusted and bowed down to Big Oil, maybe that disaster could have been prevented.

Sure – we need jobs and energy is vital to our society. But why should we continue to live in the 1930s? Even by the 1960s we had a government that pushed innovation. President Kennedy called for a man on the Moon by the end of the decade and the effort proceeded forward like a stampede, until the goal was reached.

Now, as a nation, Big Oil would have us believe we need to back up into the 1950s. We are four decades beyond Neal Armstrong’s first footprint on the moon. Where is the same level of governmental push for innovation on energy, that we saw with space exploration back in the 1960s?

What we, the people, see from the outside looking in seems to be the stifling of energy innovation, from the rather large boot of Big Oil. The strategy seems from my viewpoint to be – slow down real energy innovation until they’ve sucked as many barrels of oil out of the ground as possible. Why? – Because oil still in the ground is lost profit, when some clean, great energy source rolls into the forefront.

So again I ask – Who should you trust and who should the American people trust? In whose hands should we place our future? Should Big Oil get its way or should the health and welfare of our environment and therefore the health and welfare of the American people take the highest level of concern?